Restricted drivers vs envy?

**wolf3491** · April 26th, 2008

With gutsy, the restricted drivers for graphics and wireless worked fine since the beginning. For Hardy, I'm going to put ultimate edition 1.8 x64 on here in place of gutsy, which comes with envy. What are the differences and advantages/drawbacks of using envy over restricted drivers manager?

**piratesmack** · April 26th, 2008

Originally Posted by wolf3491

With gutsy, the restricted drivers for graphics and wireless worked fine since the beginning. For Hardy, I'm going to put ultimate edition 1.8 x64 on here in place of gutsy, which comes with envy. What are the differences and advantages/drawbacks of using envy over restricted drivers manager?

Envy actually compiles the latest driver for you

the restricted manager installs the driver from the repository (Which may not be the latest)

I believe that right now the Hardy repositories have the latest nvidia driver

**wolf3491** · April 26th, 2008

So I should stick with the restricted driver rather than envy?

**crjackson** · April 26th, 2008

Originally Posted by wolf3491

So I should stick with the restricted driver rather than envy?

Personally I like envy and it would seem that the developers do as well since it's now in the repositories.

That said, I have used both and they both worked fine for me. I can't see any difference between the restricted drivers from the repos, and the latest/greatest driver installed using envy.

**alienexplorers** · April 26th, 2008

I use Envy since the Restricted Driver Manager does not load the correct driver for my video card. If you have a newer video card I would use the Restricted Drivers, but if you have an older card like mine I would stick with Envy.

**wolf3491** · April 26th, 2008

I have a newer graphics card, so I will just stick with the restricted drivers if I can. Thanks all!

**lunarcloud** · April 26th, 2008

my issue has always been that I cannot go back to the repository version of the drivers after i've installed them via envy, they just dont work and chaos ensues.

**axor1337** · April 26th, 2008

I have never had any luck with ENVY every time I use it I have to use a bunch of terminal to uninstall for me it has never installed the right drive I like the restricted drivers better this is most true with ATI cards Nvidia seem to have better luck with ENVY

**piratesmack** · April 26th, 2008

Originally Posted by wolf3491

So I should stick with the restricted driver rather than envy?

Right now I don't think it'd matter. I'm pretty sure they already have the latest version of the Nvidia driver in the repositories so installing from the restricted manager would install the same driver.

With envy, it'd have to also install all the build dependencies to compile it so the restricted manager would probably be the better way to go

**PartisanEntity** · April 26th, 2008

If the restricted driver manager loads the right driver for you and if it is the latest driver then I would stick with that. Envy is a useful tool if and when there are newer drivers outside the repo or your card is not correctly identified.